A Writer’s Struggle: Little Women & the Publishing World

BY BROOKE LATHE

Published in 1868, the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott tells the story of the four March sisters and displays themes of familial duty, independence, and work. More specifically, readers follow Jo March, a passionate female writer who continuously depicts her life through a creative outlet. Her devotion to her craft is evident throughout the book, as Jo constantly writes in her loose pages and even builds a school for young boys and girls in her late aunt’s mansion. Her love and skill, however, are still not enough to protect her from the toughest aspect of being an aspiring writer: the publishing industry. Jo struggles to make a fair earning from her stories, prints her earlier submissions anonymously, is forced to adjust her pieces to better fit societal expectations, and is left hurt by harsh reviews.

The same can be said for Alcott, as Jo represents her own, personal battles. Alcott worked multiple jobs to support herself and her family.  She published under a pseudonym, was encouraged by her editor to write her most successful novel, Little Women, with a different outcome before printing it, and was later met with mixed critiques. Not only do Alcott’s hardships reflect the protagonist’s troubles, but they also mirror an accurate depiction of 21st-century publishing tribulations in regard to gender and race.

Over 150 years have passed since the publication of Little Women, yet the same hurdles exist for female authors and authors of color. The powerful, grandiose publishing houses separate this group from its path to success and place them on a rocky road to failure. Writers are struggling to earn a livable salary, authors remain underrepresented, their voices are getting shut down, and they cannot escape hateful comments. Little Women calls attention to the barriers within the publishing industry, both former and present, through the use of Jo March.

Empty Wallets and Exploitation

“I don’t buy anything. No clothes, no luxuries, nothing. I have no private income, no rich wife, no inheritance, no pension. I have nothing to look forward to. There’s no safety net at all.”[1] - Rupert Thomson

The price tag for written work does not always align with the amount of labor invested in its creation. A majority of writers are paid very little for stories that took an extensive amount of thought, effort, and time. Furthermore, authors who are finally met with their long-awaited “pay-day” may never actually live to see the check. As a fictional, female writer, Jo was lowballed in her first submissions while Alcott found it necessary to work multiple jobs to support her family’s needs. In the industry today, many authors, both male and female, have also come forward to reveal their income as subpar.

Repeated topics throughout Little Women are finances and the desire for wealth. Jo’s first introduction to the publishing industry comes when she reads her printed story to her sisters. Without them knowing it was Jo who wrote it, the three girls praise the author and ask who it is. Jo reveals that it was in fact her, and they squeal and demand to know how much she was paid for it. It was then that Jo admitted that the publisher told her, “he liked them both, but didn’t pay beginners, only let them print in his paper … when the beginners improved, anyone would pay.”[2] As Jo continues to write stories for the newspaper, The Spread Eagle, she is paid one dollar per column. Finally, Jo attempts to sell a story to the Weekly Volcano. The editor, Mr. Dashwood, agrees to print her story, stating that “we give twenty-five to thirty for things of this sort,” and hands Jo $25—the lowest amount normally given for a story.[3]

Similar to Jo, Louisa May Alcott wrote extensively in her private journals about income as she worked multiple jobs to earn a living while also writing on the side. Alcott wrote about being paid only five dollars for a story versus twelve dollars for sewing. Her passion was put on the back burner for a while, however, since she “found little time to work on it, with school, sewing, and housework”.[4] As time continued, she sought out different opportunities for work that catered to her true interests. Her editor, Thomas Niles, asked her to write a girls’ book while another employer asked her to be the editor of Merry’s Museum, a children’s magazine. For $500 a year, her job entailed reading manuscripts and writing one story and editorial per month.[5] Alcott attempted to try the two professions and “began at once on both new jobs; but didn’t like either,” without explaining why.[6] As a result, Alcott was making a salary of approximately $10,067 with today’s inflation for grueling work she claimed she did not even enjoy.

In November of 2022, employees of HarperCollins, a publishing company, went on strike due to unfair wages and benefits. Benjamin Norman, The New York Times., November 10, 2022 [7]

In a 2014 interview with The Guardian, then-60-year-old Rupert Thomson shares that even after working seven-day weeks without any holiday breaks for decades and writing thirteen critically acclaimed novels, he still was not able to achieve a comfortable living. Although, “Thomson is not yet broke,” the interview shares that “he’s up against it” as he lives in an attic-like studio with no luxuries even after publishing nine novels in his career.[8] Thomson notes that he came to the realization that he may need to find a new job as his editor told him that he could not afford to buy Thomson’s new book and offered a “figure that was only a fraction of what” Thomson received for his novels before.[9] Nevertheless, Thomson’s struggles fall short of what female authors often experience in the industry, as a 2018 study conducted by The Guardian proves that there is an extreme pay disparity for female authors. Through cross-referencing price, genre, and publishers, researchers were able to note that books written by women authors and released by “mainstream” publishing houses are priced 45% lower—almost half—than their male counterparts receive.[10]

Underrepresented in More Ways Than One

“The publishing industry looks a lot like these best-selling teenage dystopias: white and full of people destroying each other to survive.”[11] - Daniel José Older

Publishing anonymously allows the author to receive payment while also ensuring their work is read unbiasedly. This was a popular tool used by female writers in the nineteenth century in an attempt to avoid discrimination. At the same time, however, they are also stripping themselves of the praise they have the opportunity to receive. The hard question authors may find themselves asking is: which one is more important? Jo and Alcott take the route of the “passionate writer” as they both willingly remove their names from their work to allow their stories to stand on their own. While this may seem admirable, they actually dig future women authors into a hole as they continue the trend of hiding, leading to underrepresentation.

When Jo goes to the Roberts Brothers publishing house to sell her stories, she presents her pieces as the work of one of her friends. Once the editor decides he will print them, he asks what name ‘the friend’ would like it to be published under. Jo responds with, “None at all, if you please; she does not wish her name to appear, and has no nom de plume.”[12] While Jo does not explain why she chooses to publish under a blank name, it can be assumed that she did so because she seeks honest criticism. This might be the same reason why she first read her story to her sisters without telling them that it was her work: “to earn the praise of those she loved.”[13] Jo might have also planned to print her works anonymously because she was exploring themes, such as her moral reflections, that were not appropriate for women during the time.

In a different form of anonymous publishing, Louisa May Alcott first printed under the pen name “Flora Fairfield” when she was just starting out as a writer.[14] As she gained confidence and published under her true name, however, critics began reviewing her initial work to examine a “trend in women’s writing rather than to assess individual works.”[15] Due to this, Alcott switched to the pseudonym “A.M. Barnard” so that she could ensure her stories would not be judged based on who she was as a person. Otherwise, critics would continue to view her as unqualified to publish romance works since she was an unmarried woman.[16] Once Little Women was published and generated good attention, however, she started to step out of the shadows once again as she “solidified her persona as America’s beloved author.”[17] Nevertheless, Alcott continued writing and selling works under her pen name, despite the large amount of money publishers offered her to print them under her actual name, as she feared it would taint her literary success. Her unwillingness to be associated with her thrillers that reference murder and manipulation reveals that even the opportunity for wealth was not enough to endure the poor reputation she would most likely receive.

Although more women have entered the publishing sphere since Alcott’s era, “for much of its history, book publishing, especially literary book publishing has been run by rich white men”.[18] In an article published by Buzzfeed, one of the writer’s mentors said, “None of these agents look like me and they do not represent anyone that looks like me.” Another writer notes that with all of the interactions he has encountered with literary agents, every single one besides two was white.[19] Writers continued to state how there is a large absence of literary agents, editors, publishers, and writers of color entering the industry—which is assumed that this absence is a result of internalized racism. The publishing world lacks responsibility and the market fails to have conversations about the ways books are marketed and publicized. Sarah McCarry, a literary agent in New York City, explains “that money and attention overwhelmingly goes to what the industry has already decided is ‘marketable’—heterosexual narratives featuring white characters.”[20] Without proper marketing, there is a low percentage that any book will succeed, especially books written by authors of color or novels including minority characters.

Stolen by the Editors: The Last Word

“There are so many writers of color out there, and often what they get when they bring their books to their editors, they say, ‘We don’t relate to the character.’”[21] - Anika Noni Rose

Publishing companies play a role in the underrepresentation of literary voices. Oftentimes, the people who are in the position to change the course of a story will do so in a negative and significant way; possibly to the point where the original work is unrecognizable. Jo’s editor cut out most of her first submission, Alcott’s editor pushed her to fit the societal customs, and 21st-century editors changed the voices of a majority of minority authors. These edits can often hurt the piece in ways that the editors and writers may not realize.

In Little Women, Mr. Dashwood cuts out most of Jo’s initial piece. She did not quite know how to react as she “thought every story should have some sort of moral” and “was surprised to find that all the moral reflections,–which she had carefully put in as ballast for much romance,–had all been stricken out.”[22] Mr. Dashwood explains that readers pick up stories for entertainment, not to be lectured. And, of course, that “morals don’t sell nowadays.”[23] Due to the fact that he is a publisher, Mr. Dashwood can cause a large shift in the story’s tone because he has the literary authority to know what leaves the shelves and what does not. Mr. Dashwood finishes by suggesting that all additional stories should be stricken of any morals and to keep it short. With the idea that each story should be composed for audience enjoyment, Jo disregards the moral standards that she wants to write by and turns her focus on how to compose a piece that will put food on the table. As a result, when writing her first novel, “she cut it down one-third, and confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into the big, busy world, to try its fate,” which unfortunately reveals the puppetry behind the ink.[24]

Thomas Niles, Alcott’s editor, provided her with harsh comments, as he demanded that Jo needed to be married by the end of the book. In her private journal, Alcott wrote on November 1st that “girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life. I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.”[25] Yet, the critiques from Niles and readers inevitably forced her “to find some kind of a lover for her Jo, whom she had destined to be a jolly old maid,” resulting in her marriage with Friedrich Bhaer, a 40-year-old German Professor Jo met when working at the boarding house.[26] Despite the fact that this alteration gained Alcott significant praise from the masses as it met the societal standards of marrying off a woman instead of leaving her to stay independent, it did not match Alcott’s literary voice. As a result, she felt obligated to resort to nameless publications in the future when writing more risky plots.

Today, writers of color accuse the industry of attempting to change their literary voice. Daniel Older, a writer who works at the entertainment company Buzzfeed, explains that most of the literary agents he met with “said they loved my writing but didn’t connect with the character” and even wanted him “to delete moments when a character of color gets mean looks from white people because ‘that doesn’t happen anymore’.”[27] Similar to how Alcott’s editor told her that young, female characters need to get married at the end of the book, writers in today’s market struggle with the same requests to change specific actions or thoughts that don’t align with the editor’s beliefs. Even if their book is selected to be published and marketed, writers have noticed “whitewashed covers and constant sparring with the many micro and mega-aggressions,” such as the attempt to change their voice.[28]

Tough Skin Is Not in the Job Description ... but it Should Be

“In a time where everyone’s used to hiding behind a screen, people forget that there’s an actual breathing person on the other end, with feelings as acute as their own.”[29] -  Lucie Ataya

Although no written work has ever been or will ever be met with a 100% approval rate and endless praise from readers, the comments that spew negativity remain in the author’s memory forever. Oftentimes, the negativity is enough to alter the course of the stories themselves or will ultimately leave writers with a lack of confidence going into their next project. Jo’s first novel was met with mixed reviews and Louisa May Alcott’s first publication revealed more negative feedback than positive. In a world full of technology, however, hate comments have become harsher as most critics can remain anonymous, escaping any repercussions, while easily reaching a mass audience—most notably, the author of the critiqued work.

After Jo’s first novel is printed, she receives a mix of varying reviews. Her mother tells her that no matter what the writers say, their feedback will become useful for future stories. However, it only confuses Jo, as the reactions prove to be contradictory. One writer calls her work “an exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness,” while the next writes “the theory of the book is bad, – full of morbid fancies, spiritualist ideals, and unnatural characters.”[30] Jo consequently wishes that she “printed it whole, or not at all, for [she] hate[s] to be so horridly misjudged,” which reaffirms the dangers of editors changing authors’ voices.[31] In the end, she decides that the hurtful comments just make her stronger; yet, she goes on to sell her next pieces anonymously which begs the question: does negative criticism truly help writers?

While Alcott displayed a promising start to her career in writing, her short story Flower Fables was met with mixed reviews, and by “mid-January 1865 they had become harshly critical.”[32] Due to these critiques, Alcott did not publish most of her works under her true name up until Little Women. With the finalization of this novel, however, Alcott received thousands of letters from girls who were heartbroken that Jo and Laurie did not end up as a couple. The response to her work did not stop there, as Alcott has been met with an outpouring of scholarly attention ever since. Most notably, in the 1990s, there were over “150 journal articles, monographs, or other scholarly resources devoted to Alcott.”[33] Currently, critics continue to examine Little Women as film directors revisit the plot for remakes and Alcott’s stories continue to be analyzed in the American education system for academic discourse. Comments, both positive and negative, come from all over the world as her audience posts reviews in magazines, Google, or book websites such as Goodreads.

Even though 155 years have passed since the original publication of Little Women, readers still make an effort to leave crude remarks. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott review, Goodreads, April 6, 2004 [34]

In a society where technology surrounds us in every aspect of our lives, it is difficult to escape the comments that follow you from your place of work to your place of comfort.  With constant access to the internet, writers no longer have the advantage of disconnecting from critics’ reviews. Even more so, comments have become more impolite in the past years. Lucie Ataya, a french, female novelist, notes in her article “Bad Reviews: The Other Side of the Story” her personal experience when it comes to readers who fail to put themselves in the writer’s shoes. She writes that even when commenters believe it is “constructive criticism,” their words can be especially brutal as they are written from behind a screen.[35]

Many authors today try to think like Jo and view the comments as a mere guide for future stories. Ultimately, avoiding online reviews is not as easy as Jo ignoring feedback from the critics or Alcott refusing to read physical letters.

A Young, Aspiring Female Writer’s Response

“I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday. I think I shall write books.”[36] - Jo March

During the fall semester of my junior year in college, I took a publishing course and a feminism class simultaneously. I realized that I could easily relate a nineteenth-century story to our current working world–a comparison that is often not a positive one. I attended a lecture that shared a story of a Black writer whose editor told him that his character was “unrelatable” and therefore readers “would not be interested,”. That same week, I would also read about how Jo’s publisher told her to change the story to exclude moral lessons.

It is important to note that since the publication of Little Women, the publishing industry has made progress within the literary atmosphere—it is easy to witness when reading about the life of Jo March. More women are confidently printing with their true names, authors have the opportunity to publish independently, and we now have literary agents to guide us in the right direction. However, this does not mean the novel fails to recognize the ways we have remained the same. Writers are not making enough money to survive, most (if not all) of the industry roles lack diversity, literary voices are heavily altered, and negative reviews are inescapable. These are only a handful of the past and current negative aspects of the printing world that Little Women calls attention to.

All of the blog posts, magazine articles, newspaper stories, scholarly reviews, and novels that call attention to the dangers and failures of the publishing world are examples of writers guiding the industry to its advancement. Future generations will be able to refer back to this evidence and study both former and current barriers so they are able to recognize and abolish them.

As writers and editors are exposed to these works, they can actively take steps to eliminate unconscious sexual and racial bias. The variety of sources will also contribute to expanding literary citizenship through exposure to different authors, styles, and genres. Without this, history will inevitably remain (or repeat), leaving current and future workers in the publishing industry to continue experiencing Louisa May Alcott’s and Jo March’s struggles.

Endnotes

[1] R. McCrum, “From Bestseller to Bust: Is this the end of an author's life?” The Guardian, March 2, 2014, retrieved January 7, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/02/bestseller-novel-to-bust-author-life.

[2] Louisa May Alcott. Little Women (New York: Baronet Books, 1989) 155.

[3] Alcott, Little Women, 155. 

[4]Ednah Dow Cheney, ed., Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (Redditch, U.K.: Read Books Ltd., 2019), 80.

[5] Belle Moses, Louisa May Alcott, Dreamer and Worker: A Story of Achievement (Charleston: Nabu Press, 2010), 81.

[6] Cheney, Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals, 186.

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/books/harpercollins-strike.html.

[8] McCrum, “From Bestseller.”

[9] McCrum, “From Bestseller.”

[10] Alison Flood, “Books by Women Priced 45% Lower, Study Finds,” The Guardian, May 1, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/01/books-by-women-priced-45-lower-study-finds.

[11] Daniel José Older, “Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing,” BuzzFeed, April 17, 2014. https://www.buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolder/diversity-is-not-enough.

[12] Alcott, Little Women, 348.

[13] Alcott, Little Women, 156.

[14] Madeleine B. Stern, “Louisa May Alcott and the Boston ‘Saturday Evening Gazette.’” American Periodicals 2 (1992): 64–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20771016.

[15] Ann R. Hawkins and Maura C. Ives, Women Writers and the Artifacts of Celebrity in the Long Nineteenth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 83.

[16] Hawkins and Ives, Women Writers and the Artifacts, 82.

[17] Hawkins and Ives, Women Writers and the Artifacts, 86.

[18] Marcela Valdes, “Inside the Push to Diversify the Book Business, The New York Times, June 22, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/magazine/inside-the-push-to-diversify-the-book-business.html.

[19] Older, “Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing.”

[20] Older, “Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing.”

[21] Older, “Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing.”

[22] Alcott, Little Women, 347.

[23] Alcott, Little Women, 347.

[24] Alcott, Little Women, 271.

[25] Cheney, Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals, 201.

[26] Moses, Louisa May Alcott, Dreamer and Worker: A Story of Achievement, 189.

[27] Older, “Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing.”

[28] Older, “Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing.”

[29] Lucie Ataya, “Bad Reviews: The Other Side of the Story,” Kiingo, accessed January 7, 2023. https://kiingo.com/tip/bad-reviews-the-other-side-of-the-story.

[30] Alcott, Little Women, 271.

[31] Alcott, Little Women, 271.

[32] Hawkins, Ives, Women Writers and the Artifacts of Celebrity in the Long Nineteenth Century, 83.

[33] Gregory Eiselein, “Louisa May Alcott, Major Author: Little Women and Beyond, “ in Little Women at 150, edited by Daniel Shealy, 180–204 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2022), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv29pg4sq.12. 186.

[34] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1934.Little_Women?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=hp9OYG8qby&rank=1.

[35] Ataya, “Bad Reviews: The Other Side of the Story.”

[36] Alcott, Little Women, 271.

Author Bio

Brooke Lathe

is a junior at Fairfield University majoring in English Creative Writing and Digital Journalism, with minors in Editing & Publishing and Film, TV & Media. She currently serves as the Executive Editor for her university’s newspaper and is a script analyst for The Robb Company in Los Angeles, California. Brooke has published over 100 articles in the Fairfield Mirror and has fictional pieces in the literary journals The Awakenings Review and Late Night Library Review. Brooke plans to pursue a career in television screenwriting.